1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling the restriction on traffic in a mobile communication system, when congestion occurs in the mobile communication network, which restricts processing for switching in mobile communications and controls the system so as to connect speech channels between switching centers in accordance with the restrictions.
2. Description of the Related Art
As will be explained in detail later with reference to the drawings, in a conventional connection sequence in processing for switching in mobile communications at times of congestion in a mobile communication system, it was not possible for a home memory center to detect, before executing processing by a routing request (ROUTREQ), in advance the fact that the destination mobile communication switching center was congested, obtained from previous processing by a location request (LOCREQ). For this reason, at the time of congestion, almost all of the processing for switching in mobile communication, performed after the processing due to the location request (LOCREQ) at the home memory center, became wasted and there was a problem that the time for the processing for the switching in mobile communication was increasedxe2x80x94resulting in inefficiency.
Further, when it is not possible for a caller to connect to a destination mobile terminal due to congestion, the caller can only operate the call originating terminal to try to call again if he wants to communicate with the destination mobile terminal. For this reason, there is a possibility that the caller would have to operate the call originating terminal many times in order to place the call, so the operation becomes troublesome. Further, there was another problem in that, at the time of congestion, a caller could not communicate with a destination mobile terminal even if desiring, in an emergency, to talk with the other party at all costs.
The present invention was made in consideration with the above problems and has as its object to provide a method and apparatus for controlling the restriction on traffic in a mobile communication system enabling an efficient mobile communication system with little wasted processing.
To attain the above object, according to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus for controlling the restriction on traffic in a mobile communication system including a report means, provided in a mobile communication switching center, for reporting a processing state indicating a congested state or a normal state to a management center in advance; a management means, provided in the management center, for managing the processing states of all mobile communication switching centers based on reports of the processing states; a notifying means, provided in the management center, for investigating by the management means the processing state of a destination mobile communication switching center in response to a request for a location of a destination corresponding to a call from a gateway mobile switching center and notifying the gateway mobile switching center that, when in a congested state, the processing state is a congested state; and a control means, provided in the gateway mobile switching center, for controlling the system so that, when receiving a notification of a congested state, the gateway mobile switching center does not connect a speech channel to a mobile communication switching center in a congested state, whereby an efficient mobile communication system with little wasted processing can be realized.